Hi there,
I've read some other posts about this topic, but none seemed to clearly answer my question.
My wife filed alone on Jan 20 2009 for CH7. We live in Georgia. We just realized that we never thought about a tax refund for this year, and the attourney we hired never asked about this during our meetings.
I'm not even sure if we'll be getting a refund yet (I owe a big chunk for self employment taxes). But lets say that we'd be getting a refund of 5k for the sake of arguement. What is our best strategy if we want to keep this? Here are the questions based on what I've ready so far:
1. Would it be best to file now, get the refund, and spend it on legitimate and documented expenses (car expenses, living expenses, property taxes, etc) before the 341 meeting, scheduled for March?
2. Would it be better to wait until after the 341 to file and then spend the refund?
3. I know much of this depends on the trustee involved. Some folks indicated that their trustee asked about their tax status and wanted to seize their entire refund, and others said it never came up during the meeting. But I want to plan on worst case and take action in advance in possible...but not do anything illegal.
Honestly, I don't feel it's "fair" that the court would have any claim on the return, as if we do get a return it would be on taxes that I paid (my wife had no income and no tax paid). Someone even suggested that we file our taxes separately, but I'm not sure I want to do that, and it give the appearance we're trying to pull a fast one in my opinion.
Thanks so much for anyone's help...first time poster and hopefully a contributor soon.
I've read some other posts about this topic, but none seemed to clearly answer my question.
My wife filed alone on Jan 20 2009 for CH7. We live in Georgia. We just realized that we never thought about a tax refund for this year, and the attourney we hired never asked about this during our meetings.
I'm not even sure if we'll be getting a refund yet (I owe a big chunk for self employment taxes). But lets say that we'd be getting a refund of 5k for the sake of arguement. What is our best strategy if we want to keep this? Here are the questions based on what I've ready so far:
1. Would it be best to file now, get the refund, and spend it on legitimate and documented expenses (car expenses, living expenses, property taxes, etc) before the 341 meeting, scheduled for March?
2. Would it be better to wait until after the 341 to file and then spend the refund?
3. I know much of this depends on the trustee involved. Some folks indicated that their trustee asked about their tax status and wanted to seize their entire refund, and others said it never came up during the meeting. But I want to plan on worst case and take action in advance in possible...but not do anything illegal.
Honestly, I don't feel it's "fair" that the court would have any claim on the return, as if we do get a return it would be on taxes that I paid (my wife had no income and no tax paid). Someone even suggested that we file our taxes separately, but I'm not sure I want to do that, and it give the appearance we're trying to pull a fast one in my opinion.
Thanks so much for anyone's help...first time poster and hopefully a contributor soon.
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